Why One Third Of Electric-Car Buyers Might Not Buy Another

To fuel your love of cars,

Electric-car owners tend to be enthusiastic evangelists for the good points of driving on grid power.

At least, the ones we hear from usually are.

But there’s another group of plug-in electric car owners who aren’t quite as enthusiastic.

In fact, up to one-third of electric-car buyers in Japan say they might not buy another one, according to a current article in McKinsey Quarterly, the business journal of the well-known consulting firm.

In its study of early plug-in car buyers, McKinsey said, the firm found that some of them felt “seduced” by the various advantages of driving electric.

Those include the better driving experience during a test drive, various forms of government incentives and financial subsidies, and the promise of lower per-mile costs for “fuel.”

But, unlike well-informed and environmentally aware green buyers, who understood the tradeoffs, these buyers only became aware of electric-car drawbacks after they purchased.

Those included the challenges of finding a charging station to recharge the car, and the costs of electricity to do so.

The McKinsey study also confirms the widely accepted belief that price is important, and only when electric cars get closer to the price of comparable gasoline cars will there be a true mass market for them.

To read the entire article, McKinsey asks you to register on its site with your name, job title, and company name. You can decide whether you want to do that.

If you’re an electric-car owner today–and we know there are a lot of you on this site–would you buy another based on your experience so far?